Tag Archives: Salman Rushdie

Three-quarters to the end of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, I’m thinking I’ve missed the boat A LITTLE. You know, the one sailing strong on the “smoke and mirrors” theme of truth, the very one dropping anchors of reality in earlier readings.

Why, not so far away in Book One, I recall underlining this passage — only to ignore it in my March write-up:

“True, for me, was from my earliest days something hidden inside the stories Mary Pereira told me. Mary my ayah who was both more and less than a mother; Mary who knew everything about all of us. True was a thing concealed just over the horizon towards which the fisherman’s finger pointed in the picture on my wall while the young Raleigh listened to his tales…I measure truth against those early things: Is this how Mary would have told it?” (p. 87*)

Then somewhere in Book Two, I underlined this passage — which again, by the end of April, failed to make press in April’s write-up:

“”What is truth?” I waxed rhetorical, “What is sanity” Did Jesus rise up from the grave? Do Hindus not accept…that the world is a kind of dream; that Brahma dreamed, is dreaming the universe that we only see dimly through that dream web, which is Maya. Maya.”” (p. 242)

Now comes May’s write-up. And no longer can I ignore the undercurrent of truth versus illusion — the ability of one — any one of us and any of Rushdie’s characters — to discern in total, the falseness and reality of things. I can’t ignore it because it’s EVERYWHERE. As big and bright as a billboard advertising Kolynos Toothpaste, in fact. And to put the cart before the horse — and why not, since Rushdie is fond of doing the same? — is this wonderful observation on truth and false toward the end of this month’s reading:

…in a country where the truth is what it is instructed to be, reality quite literally ceases to exist, so that everything becomes possible except what we are told is the case; and maybe this was the difference between my Indian childhood and Pakistani adolescence — that in the first I was beset by an infinity of alternative realities, while in the second I was adrift, disorientated, amid an equally infinite number of falsenesses, unrealities and lies.” (p. 373)

So much happens in the second half of Book Two. Dominoes fall. One event crashing into another until little is left standing. All because characters — and Saleem, in particular, who sees himself on center stage — can’t help but reach false conclusions to perceived smidgens of truth — and act accordingly to destructive results.

First, Saleem’s three exiles: the first from his changeling family, the second from India and another from his rich inner world of the children of midnight — the latter, because of a nose job that results in shutting down his inner airwaves but offers in return the power of “sniffing-out-the-truths” (p. 352) in his exterior world.

Second, there is death — death of characters and, as a result, death of familiar ways of living. Too many bodies to count except to say that there is plenty of room on board for the re-appearance of Shiva and Parvarti-the-Witch and whatever other children of midnight might wish to visit in Book Three.

Then, there is rebirth and transformation: Of love between Saleem’s changeling parents and of a shameful true-false love Saleem feels for his sister, the Brass Monkey — who, surprisingly, becomes not only tame and malleable while living in Pakistan, but an overnight singing sensation known as Jamila Singer. Perhaps, most intriguing, is a rebirth of a protective sheet, with one small hole cut in the center — the one used to shield Jamila the Brass Monkey from her adoring public reminds us of another in Book One which shielded Saleem’s “grandmother” from the eyes of her future husband. And really, how can anyone get a sense of the whole truth — of a person place or thing — when peering through a small hole of a sheet?

As usual, I’ve left much unsaid — because, as usual, there’s just too much in Rushdie’s fictional world to point a finger at. But not so ‘as usual’ is this: that unlike the previous two, this third section of reading was tough going. Not because it’s not beautifully told. Or that the pace wasn’t good. Or that the characters had lost their power to charm me. No, if anything, I found myself caring more about what happens to Saleem and his family, as I followed their movements to deal with loose “truths” that have slithered across chapters like a serpent to poison relationships and destroy worlds.

No, the reasons are more difficult to explain. Maybe because some great truth is slithering off the page to become personal. Maybe I feel snake-bit. For like Saleem and company, I realize my bit knowledge of Truth — the one I can see through a small hole in a symbolic perforated sheet — can only help me get at truth but not quite nail it. Suffice it to say that the truth I’ve witnessed unfurl in Rushdie’s story is greater than any one character has yet realized. And that it’s this fuller truth I’ve found exploding off the page into my own life.

If these characters can do and think such horrible deeds in the name of ‘truth’ — small case ‘t’ — and be so terribly mistaken in their one-sided judgments and self-righteousness — then what about me and my own small world? What about any of us? Can we be so different?

Unless of course, I’ve got it all wrong. Yes. Perhaps I’ve stayed with Rushdie in India too long. For I, too, could be “obsessed with correspondence;” of finding “similarities between this and that, between apparently unconnected things… looking for meaning” revealed “only in flashes.” (p. 344)

Perhaps better minds than mine know where Rushide’s boat is heading. But wherever it docks, I’ve come to accept it will take me a little longer to get there. I’m lagging behind. Passing time and words on the slow boat to China.

Note: All page references relate to 2006 Random House Trade Paperback Edition. For other viewpoints, please follow the link to other reactions of those participating in the read-along.

How tempting to leave it at just that. I can’t say why, but I’m not ready to talk of what I’ve read quite yet. But ready or not, it’s time to share notes with read-along partners — and any other who desires to listen in — though to react at all, feels plain premature at this point of the tale.

In this month’s reading, the spotlight shifts from the narrator’s holey grandfather to the young narrator himself. It’s a story about growing up, endearing as it is universal. I like this narrator. No, I love this narrator. Snot-nosed and ugly and misunderstood he may be, but how can one not admire his youthful idealism and brutally honest self-assessments?

Rushdie’s story just grows and grows, making it hard to point a finger at any thing in particular. It grows like the young babe Saleem — and it grows like the population of India, too — though, thank God, it does not grow uncontrollably. But at this point of the story, I wish I possessed greater understanding of how the young narrator, Saleem Sinai, is a mirror of India’s own young life. While I sense that child and country are inextricably linked, for better and worse, I don’t yet understand HOW this is. Yes, both experience growing pains from internal turmoil and blood-letting. But surely there is more to their common ground than the story has currently revealed?

I’ve glimpsed three great religions and God-knows-how-many-languages and voices influencing both India and Saleem. I see both growing up under the watchful eyes of an expectant world, waiting for a sort of payback on investments and loans. And unlike the country of his birth, I’ve watched a young narrator become absolutely consumed with need to understand his larger purpose in the world. So much so, that Saleem is in constant need of a hidey hole to escape the pressures of his world.

Hiding that begins in the physical world — from a washing-chest in his mother’s bathroom to a clock-tower next to his parent’s home — becomes mental, growing out of Saleem’s interior world and a couple of physical blows to the head. The last, a childhood mishap, finished the work of his father’s hand and “wild anger,” which left Saleem’s left ear permanently damaged.

So what words could beget such parental violence? I’ll only share that Saleem was premature in his conclusions. That Saleem was wrong. That his parents more wrong. And that maybe there’s plenty of wrong to go around whenever any of us fail to listen to others as fully as we can. Or ought.

But lack of listening isn’t Saleem’s problem. Not at all. Because, much like a radio, Saleem is gifted with a fantastic ability to tune his mind into other minds, to eavesdrop on real-time thinking of friends, parents and politicians. What begins as simple mind-reading soon mushrooms into a type of telepathic communication center — where Saleem’s mind becomes much like an internet server, allowing Midnight’s Children — those uniquely gifted Indian children born in the first hour of Indian Independence — to communicate with one another. There he meets scary Shiva — the true son of Saleem’s parents born at the same time as Saleem and India — who is dark to Saleem’s light and pessimist to Saleem’s idealism, hinting of conflicts to come. What grows from this conflict is for the second half of the book to reveal.

But what, I wonder, will grow from all I failed to mention? Evie Burns, for example? The Brass Monkey of a sister? And all those with bald heads that keep popping up from time to time, on the pages of this book? Who can say, at this point, whether any and what and who are the red herrings of this story? Who knows but what may ultimately become important in this fabulous tale?

Especially, with a narrator who laments, in the final paragraphs of this month’s section of reading, this bit of wisdom to fly off the page…

“Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.”

With words like these, I can only conclude I don’t know the half of it.

I’m not sure why I said yes. I’m no good at book clubs and reading groups. But in spite of past failings, and because I fell in love at first sight with the novel’s opening paragraphs, I signed on to read Salman Rushdie’s award-winning Midnight’s Children.

Rushdie birthed this masterpiece while I was in the midst of mastering the pieces of my busy young life — marriage, career and motherhood without apple pie but plenty of midnight feedings to compensate.

Older, if not wiser, I’m still busy. It’s the way I keep time. But not too overextended for this travel piece — this story in a story that I believe, once I’ve arrived to the final word and period, may point to some greater truth that lives just off the page.

Why do I think this? Well, because this story moves. Though not always in chronological order. Like a pendulum, the story grants peeks into the future, speaking of events and characters without proper introductions — then swings back to make sure we’re still hanging on to the story line. In a fictional world where time is elastic — stretching forward, snapping back, keeping readers at attention — it’s good that Rushdie never loses control.

We are safe, following the trail of words left by expert hands, even while “traveling” such strange lines across India, even as we careen through the countdown of time to reach the end of British colonial rule. Strange, as in, where are these sentences leading me? And where will they take the three generations of family the author introduces in Book One, whose lives intersect with the wilds of three great world religions?

Hinduism, Islam and Christianity are all present and accounted for — while the story’s patriarchal grandfather, poor soul, loses his faith in God before we’re barely out of the gate. It happens — on page two of the story — in such a humiliating, unforgettable way: Nose first, Aadam Aziz dives to prayer mat and, rather than encountering God, crashes into the earth. Three drops of blood fall. A hole in his soul opens up. And his faith in God leaks out so fast he becomes “caught in a strange middle ground, trapped between belief and disbelief…” Readers are left with a holey hero, who lives a young life into an old one, stuffing his hole to the brim with marriage and career and children.

Hmmm.

I’m thankful to the wise organizers of this reading experience who built in plenty of time for spacious reading. The schedule has not only granted breathing room for life but allowed me to fly back to the beginning to re-read Book One with “traveled eyes.” Once was simply not enough for me, since I missed too much, even traveling slow. I was getting the gist of the story but leaving too many fine details and scenery behind.

I don’t want to miss anything along the way, if I can help it. Every word, every image, every potential connection that bridges one idea to another feels important. Of course, I am missing details. How can I not? There is just too much to take in. And the author knows it. He has written a novel made to read over and over again; he implies as much when he writes, toward the end of Book One,

“To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world. I told you that.”

Since I’m just a “tourist” traveling in a foreign land and time, I cannot hope to swallow Rushdie’s world. But like any tourist, I hope to carry away sweet memories of my visit. And, since I do not armchair-travel alone, I look forward to enlarging my perspective by reading other reactions to Rushdie’s story at today’s first of four meeting stops.